terminal, serving Marin County residents
who commute to San Francisco.
"The ferries helped save this city," she
said. "They worked night and day, around
the clock, transporting fire-fighting equip
ment to the city and carrying people across
the bay to safety." Today ferries offer a
pleasant alternative to commuters faced
with rising fuel costs and congested bridges
and freeways.
In addition to the ferries, seven bridges
stitch the bay together, and patronage of the
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system
which includes a tunnel under the bay that
links San Francisco and Oakland-is stead
ily growing.
For me, the best way to get around San
Francisco is with comfortable shoes and 50
cents to ride the cable cars. The system, with
its little cars driven by huge wheels located
at Mason and Washington Streets, is now a
national historic landmark. The wheels
move cables that hum along just beneath the
pavement. The gripman engages the clutch,
jaws under the car grasp the cable, and
you're off.
I boarded a car at Sutter and Powell
Streets to get to Fisherman's Wharf.
We climbed Nob Hill, the cable singing
that high-pitched metallic song and the grip
man clanging the warning bell with his own
rhythmic composition.
The car became a roller coaster climbing
slowly toward the top of the hill, gliding
across the flat intersection, then . .. swoop
ing down the hill, and there was the bright
blue bay: Alcatraz with Angel Island be
yond, whitecaps and white sails catching the
fresh breeze below billowing clouds.
Women Lead Antipollution Fight
The post-World War II years have not left
the bay unscathed. If a developer wanted
more room, he merely diked off an area,
pumped it dry, and filled it in with dirt.
Whole communities sprang up where there
was once only water; much of downtown
San Francisco sits on fill. Ending that prac
tice was a goal of a small group of people
drawn together by one woman, Kay Kerr.
In the 1960s, Mrs. Kerr often showed off
the bay. As the wife of Clark Kerr, then
president of the University of California, she
took visiting dignitaries around. What she
San FranciscoBay: The Beauty and the Battles
saw made her sad. "It was obvious there had
to be a stop to the pollution. You could smell
it. Canneries in the south bay were emptying
their wastes. There was a sewage outlet near
the bay bridge. There was no more swim
ming, and the air was polluted. And when
the freeways and the BART subway tunnel
were built, they filled the bay with dirt and
rubble from old buildings."
Mrs. Kerr, with her university friends Es
ther Gulick and Sylvia McLaughlin, found
ed the Save San Francisco Bay Association
in 1961.
Herb Caen, columnist for the San Fran
cisco Chronicle, wrote in 1965: "The great
public is apathetic: 'How can they say our
bay is disappearing when I can look out of
my window and see it?'" But Mrs. Kerr
knew the association had struck a chord
when it sent out 700 letters of appeal and got
back 600 replies.
She persuaded a morning disc jockey,
Don Sherwood, to describe various threats
to the bay so commuters could spot them on
their way to work.
"He was great," Mrs. Kerr said. "Every
day he would say something like: 'Don't
drink your morning coffee until you've writ
ten to the governor and the legislature and
told them how much you love the bay.' "
They did, in droves. The Save San Fran
cisco Bay Association today claims 20,000
members. The group led the long, bitter
fight to create the San Francisco Bay Con
servation and Development Commission
(BCDC), which now determines what proj
ects can be built in or over the water and
must approve any project within a hundred
feet of the shoreline.
In San Francisco's State Building I heard
the commission debate whether the bayside
city of Vallejo should be allowed to fill 11
acres of Mare Island Strait across from the
Mare Island Naval Shipyard. A private firm
would use the property to assemble oil
drilling rigs and other marine equipment.
In granting a permit, the BCDC autho
rized one of the largest fills in its history
but only with a trade-off: Vallejo would be
required to restore an adjacent 50-acre par
cel of shoreline just inside the mouth of the
Napa River to its original condition.
Requiring a developer to restore shoreline
property in exchange for a permit is called
831